Christopher Sabat

If Sean Schemmel is the voice of Goku, Christopher Sabat is basically the voice of everyone else. Sabat's first Dragon Ball role was Yamcha, and from that foothold he grew into an entire constellation of characters: Vegeta's proud snarl, Piccolo's gravel, Zarbon, Recoome, Burter, Jeice, Salza, Shenron's booming wish-granter, Kami, Korin, Mr. Popo, King Piccolo, Grandpa Gohan, Ox-King, and Omega Shenron. He also splits the fused voices of Vegito and Gogeta with Schemmel, which means a full Fusion Dance sequence in the Funimation dub is essentially Sabat talking to himself.

Beyond the booth, Sabat took on ADR director duties for Dragon Ball Z and steered the voice direction on films like Bardock: The Father of Goku, The History of Trunks, Lord Slug, and Cooler's Revenge. He adapted scripts, produced sessions, and shaped how an entire generation of English speakers heard the franchise.

Sabat tends to land the tough guys. His filmography outside Dragon Ball leans into exactly the type he became famous for: Roronoa Zoro in One Piece, Alex Louis Armstrong in Fullmetal Alchemist, Kazuma Kuwabara in Yu Yu Hakusho, Elfman Strauss in Fairy Tail, Ayame Sohma in Fruits Basket, and most prominently All Might in My Hero Academia, whose booming Silver Age hero voice carries clear echoes of his Vegeta work. In 2004 he founded OkraTron 5000, an audio production company in Richardson, Texas, specializing in interactive voiceover, music, and sound design for games.

He has appeared in nearly every Dragon Ball video game Bandai Namco has shipped, from the original Budokai through Budokai Tenkaichi, Raging Blast, Xenoverse 1 and 2, and beyond, almost always voicing a half dozen or more characters per title. Sabat has said Future Trunks is his personal favorite character, but Vegeta remains his favorite role.

Few English voice actors have left a deeper fingerprint on a franchise than Sabat has on Dragon Ball. He is the only actor to have played the same character through every English dub of the original four theatrical Dragon Ball movies, and his Vegeta line readings, the clipped arrogance, the reluctant admiration for Kakarot, have become quotation fuel for fans, memes, and tribute videos.

More than thirty years after Yamcha first came out of his mouth, Sabat is still stepping up to the mic for new Dragon Ball projects, still running sessions, still giving the Prince of all Saiyans his unmistakable growl. For the Funimation dub generation, his voice is simply part of the furniture of the series.